How to remove the location from photos before you share them

When sharing from the Photos app, tap Options at the top of the share sheet and turn off Location before sending. To stop recording location in new photos entirely, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Camera and choose Never.

The Options switch only affects that one share. Photos copied to a computer by cable or synced to some cloud services still contain their GPS data.

Open the Camera app's settings and turn off "Location tags", "Save location" or similar (the name varies by manufacturer). Google Photos also has a setting to remove geo-location when sharing via link. Check a photo's details afterwards to confirm the location is gone.

Large social networks generally remove GPS data from the public copy when you post, though the company itself may keep it. Email, many messaging apps when sending files at original quality, cloud links, forums and marketplaces typically keep the metadata intact.

On iPhone, open the photo and swipe up: if a map appears, the photo has location data. On Android, open the photo in Google Photos, tap the three dots and look for a location in the details. On a computer, the file's properties (Windows) or Preview's inspector (Mac) show GPS fields when they exist.

Do this once for the camera app you use. If new photos no longer show a location, your settings are working.

Even without GPS data, the picture itself can reveal a lot: house numbers, street signs, the view from a window, school uniforms, car number plates or a parcel label with your address. Before posting publicly, take a second look at the background. Cropping or blurring a detail is quicker than explaining it later.

Localvert's Remove EXIF tool shows what a photo contains — GPS coordinates, camera, date — and removes it without re-compressing the image, so quality doesn't change. Everything happens in your browser, which matters here: uploading a photo to a website to remove its location would send that location to a server first.